ispered. She
drew Vittoria away by the hand, telling Merthyr Powys that it was unkind
to him, but that he should be permitted to claim his fair friend from
noon to the dinner-bell.

Laura and Bianca were discussing the same subject as the one for which
Anna desired an interview with Vittoria. It was to know the conditions
and cause of the duel between Angelo Guidascarpi and Captain Weisspriess,
and whither Angelo had fled. "In other words, you cry for vengeance under
the name of justice," Laura phrased it, and put up a prayer for Angelo's
escape.

The countess rebuked her. "It is men like Angelo who are a scandal to
Italy."

"Proclaimed so; but by what title are they judged?" Laura retorted. "I
have heard that his duel with Count Paul was fair, and that the grounds
for it were just. Deplore it; but to condemn an Italian gentleman without
hearing his personal vindication, is infamous; nay, it is Austrian. I
know next to nothing of the story. Countess Ammiani has assured me that
the brothers have a clear defence--not from your Vienna point of view:
Italy and Vienna are different sides of the shield."

Vittoria spoke most humbly before Anna; her sole irritating remark was,
that even if she were aware of the direction of Angelo's flight, she
would not betray him.

The duchess did her utmost to induce her to see that he was a criminal,
outlawed from common charity. "These Italians are really like the Jews,"
she said to Anna; "they appear to me to hold together by a bond of race:
you cannot get them to understand that any act can be infamous when one
of their blood is guilty of it."

Anna thought gloomily: "Then, why do you ally yourself to them?"

The duchess, with Anna, Lena, and Wilfrid, drove to the Ultenthal.
Vittoria and Merthyr had a long afternoon of companionship. She had been
shyer in meeting him than in meeting Wilfrid, whom she had once loved.
The tie between herself and Wilfrid was broken; but Merthyr had remained
true to his passionless affection, which ennobled him to her so that her
heart fluttered, though she was heavily depressed. He relieved her by
letting her perceive that Carlo Ammiani's merits were not unknown to him.
Merthyr smiled at Carlo for abjuring his patrician birth. He said: "Count
Ammiani will be cured in time of those little roughnesses of his adopted
Republicanism. You must help to cure him. Women are never so foolish as
men in these things."

When Merthyr had spoken thus, she felt